


A Holy Place

by Rynfinity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:18:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3188678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynfinity/pseuds/Rynfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Allfather looks around, blinking - winking, rather... this will take some getting used to - as his lone eye adjusts to the great, shadowed hall.  The remaining ceiling is high and arched, the walls adorned simply with hangings of embossed leather that call to mind tapestries.</p>
<p>Another time, were he here with different purpose, studying them might well prove fascinating.  Useful, as well.</p>
<p>Not today, though.  After he sees his men back to Asgard safely, Odin only wants to go home.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Set before/during one of the flashbacks we see in the first Thor movie, late in the war on Jotunheim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Holy Place

In all his long years Odin has never developed any fondness for the aftermath of battle. This war, albeit brief and decisive, has been both a taxing and a vexing one; while his people have come away victorious this final day, their losses have been far from light and their tangible spoils few.

Their ultimate goal itself is well-met; the casket has been secured and is safely en route back to Asgard in the company of two of Odin's most trusted guards (Not that trust is truly a factor, of course: the men share neither their king's protective immunity nor his seidr. If they so much as attempt to touch the thing, let alone wield it, they will die. None of this is lost on them, or on Odin).

Beyond the casket’s seizure, though, little about this feels like winning.

As the remaining foot-soldiers - heavy, insulated gloves pulled carefully into place - make one last pass through the ruined city, dispatching the gravely wounded (and plundering the dead; such is the way of things and, whether or not it is personally to his liking, the Allfather will not intervene), Odin expects they will find little in the way of useful goods with which to offset their own hardship.

The Jotnar are a strong, resourceful race, one which does not prepare its people for battle via conventional means. Jotun weapons are formed exclusively from ice, ice of their own bodies' making; as such their swords and clubs melt away at death, each weapon refreezing into the ground upon which its owner take one final rest.

Jotun armor is really no different; it is for the most part Jotnar hide.

Odin knows that, in happier times, those of standing do adorn their persons with gold and gems. Still, even among his own people, one does not go gilded into battle; the Jotnar are no exception. Too, the ice keeps its secrets; he suspects his men could search long and hard, until they took their death of this cold, and yet not find the places where such treasures might be hidden.

No, Asgard's army will be heading home victorious but empty-handed... wounded, drained, and angry. This campaign has proved but a weak success, in the eyes of the common soldier, and Odin knows it will bring endless trouble. He can feel it in his aching bones, in the throbbing of the damaged flesh around his lost eye.

He stands quiet on the steps of a large, partly ruined temple and heaves a weary sigh, frowning at the way Jotunheim's sharp, dry air burns his windpipe and itches in his lungs. For him there is only this one last place to search (as this is a place of reverence, a holy place, he will not let his soldiers run amok here; it is an easy enough vow to keep, given that all save him are busy in the city below) and it will be over. As he looks out across the snowscape he can see how already the fastest of his troops are hastening towards the meet point; he will finish this, join them there, and let Heimdall call them home.

And then he will face a tongue-lashing from his dear queen regarding the whole _eye business_. Frigga doubtless saw this coming - she inevitably does, as weaving together the fabric of time is both her blessing and her curse, and she _knows_ Odin has not the power to alter the future, to change the threads laid out in her loom - but she had ordered him to wear his face shield and he had deigned not to do so.

She is bound to be angry, and no amount of "we cannot gainsay fate" will save him.

Odin hauls himself wearily up the steps and pauses just inside the threshold. The temple's interior is vast and dim, almost too dim for Aesir sight. Indeed its roof is partially crushed, leaving a section of the floor covered in ice boulders and part of the structure open to the sky, but they have fought for many hours. It is well into evening and even on the cusp of the warmer season the Jotun day is short. Odin raises one gloved, gauntleted hand. He mutters to himself and those few temple torches still held fast in their mounts give off a faint blue-green glow.

It's enough. He needed to be able to see his way about, and now he can. Odin knows no good can come of letting a great column of light pour out through the damaged ceiling and up into the sky. He has no intention whatsoever of letting this become his byre; therefore it need not look like one.

He looks around, blinking - winking, rather... this will take some getting used to - as his lone eye adjusts to the great, shadowed hall. The remaining ceiling is high and arched, the walls adorned simply with hangings of embossed leather that call to mind tapestries.

Another time, were he here with different purpose, studying them might well prove fascinating. Useful, as well.

Not today, though. After he sees his men back to Asgard safely, Odin only wants to go home.

Nothing moves. Near his feet the Allfather sees the hand, shoulder, and face of one Jotun; the remainder of the giant is buried beneath the roof rubble. The creature’s skull is partially crushed, its thick skin split away to reveal the white glint of bone. Beneath its head is a surprising amount of blood, all of which has long since frozen to a dull sheen. Odin is unable to confirm that it no longer breathes - Frost Giants reclaim their exhaled heat and moisture, meaning their breath does not steam in the frigid air as other races' do - but he harbors no doubt this giant is wholly dead. Odin squats before it and closes its thick eyelids. Its eyes have lost their once-red hue; they have already faded to a sickly yellow-grey, and their surfaces are hazy and clouded.

The Allfather is exhausted. He does not even notice the point at which his mind starts to wander. 

Which likely explains how it happens that he is caught unprepared - off thinking of dead Jotnar, wondering if they have their own equivalent of Valhalla, and if it is cold or warm - by a small but powerful spark of seidr.

Odin snaps back to attention. He jumps to his feet, armor clattering. There is no point in trying for silence; anything he can feel can doubtless sense his own seidr in return.

It is no fluke. A quick magic-detecting sweep of the space ahead does indeed reveal that (the giant on the floor before him is still dead, had he harbored any misgivings... which he had not, and) he is not alone.

Be that as he may, as he looks about Odin can see no one. His pulse quickens. The sweat-matted hair on the back of his neck rises as it inevitably does when his two forms of _sight_ relay contradictory information. At the altar basin - which is not fully ten yards hence, its pedestal thin and tapered and far too small to hide even the smallest Aesir child (let alone a giant) and its bowl clearly unoccupied save for a rumpled fur peeking out over the rim - he can feel something.

Something powerful, something untamed.

The Allfather squats awkwardly in his heavy armor and scrabbles up a handful of small ice chunks, all the while keeping both his eye and his attention focused on the altar basin. As he rises to standing, Odin (fights back a groan, and) flings the ice as hard as he can. One chunk bounces off the plinth; the rest of it passes through the air unhindered to clatter on the floor beyond.

All of it, that is, but one small lump. _That_ one strikes the wadded heap of fur.

The fur _jumps_ , and Odin with it.

This could be a trap. It could be his death waiting under that fluffy scrap of hide. That said, he'd like to think Frigga would have fussed just a tad more over his departure had she known it would be his last. More than anything he is simply too tired for real caution. He stalks over to the altar and shifts the fur aside, bracing for whatever attack may come.

_In the fur, there is a baby_.

Well.

Norns, he had not braced for _that_.

The baby is blue. Not blue with cold; blue through and through, with wide, unblinking red eyes and unruly tufts of black hair atop its little head. As Jotnar babies go it is surprisingly small, perhaps even smaller than his own son had been at what must have been a comparable age. And while the little one does not smile, it does reach with both its tiny hands for his huge, gauntleted paw.

Odin thinks of Frigga, thinks of Thor. He thinks about infants; about how they are omens of life, not death. He thinks a child cannot survive this place, not with its- its caretaker dead and its parents gone.

The baby stretches and stretches for his hand, cooing softly.

When Odin catches himself thinking about how whomever left this child here must have done so in hopes the very Gods would protect it, he knows he has talked himself into something.

This battle is wholly lost; there is nothing to be gained by wasting time pretending otherwise.

He takes a last few moments to - using the edges of the fur, for safety's sake - roll the baby's naked body to and fro. It bears no visible injuries. Its small back sports wrinkled imprints from its nest of fur; its skin is child-soft, then, not armored like that of its elders. Its genitals are neither fully male nor fully female, at least by comparison to the Aesir babies he's seen. The inside of its tiny mouth is pink-purple and wet and, as he shifts it one last time, the baby splatters him with well more than a few drops of urine.

Its piss hisses and steams against the icy metal of his breastplate. It smells faintly of the sea.

Odin curses softly and smiles despite himself. The thing is well enough, then. Good.

Enough is enough. He has given the little thing sufficient time and then some to kill him, were that its intent. He scoops it to his breast, fur and all.

The baby grabs at his beard. Its fingers find a tiny patch of skin. Despite Odin's relative immunity the cold _hurts_ ; he starts, and lets out a huff of warm breath.

As the frozen mist of his own air clears, Odin starts again even more violently than before. The baby is _pink_ where its fingers had touched him... and that same rosy pinkness is rapidly spreading across the rest of its skin.

Odin thinks his eye deceives him. He shuts it tight and counts to ten, then counts five more just for the sake of doing something. When he opens his eye and looks again, he holds an Aesir baby – with the blue-green eyes normal to one so young, white-pale skin pink from the cold, hair still a thatch of black - in the crook of one arm and his whole front sparks with residual seidr.

It _is_ a lovely baby, for all of how this makes little sense. Odin cannot help but smile.

The baby smiles, in seeming return. Odin is surprised; he would have thought it too young.

He knows he should make haste. By now his men will be awaiting him, with even the last stragglers having finally dragged themselves to the Bifrost's mark. Odin quickly loosens the straps of his breastplate and tucks the - now warm, and consequently at grave risk of harm - fur-wrapped infant inside.

It relaxes into the muscles of his chest. Its raw power is a pleasant hum through his leather tunic.

"You shall come with me," he tells the baby as he refastens his armor and shifts his cape to hide its awkward jut. "See to it that you do not make me sorry."

The baby, of course, makes no reply. It _is_ very young. Still, Odin finds himself vaguely unsettled just the same.


End file.
